Science and Scientists

Chinese Science

Asians have a tradition of scientific discovery and invention dating to ancient China and the Four Great Inventions: papermaking, the compass, gunpowder, and printing. Twenty-first-­century Chinese scientists have also made invaluable contributions to scientific knowledge. Taiwanese American scientist David Ho is an acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) researcher who with his team pioneered the use of protease inhibitors in treating human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients. He serves as the Irene Diamond Professor at the Rockefeller University in New York and the scientific director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York.

Born in Taichung, Taiwan, David Ho immigrated to the United States with his mother and younger brother to join his father, who had been in the country since 1957. In 1974, he received his bachelor of science in biology with honors from the California Institute of Technology and his master's degree from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology in 1978. In 1981, while he served as a resident in internal medicine at Cedars–Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, he came into contact with some of the first reported cases of what later would be called AIDS.

For the next three decades, Dr. Ho worked at the forefront of AIDS research. He published more than 400 papers, helping the scientific community to understand the mechanics of HIV replication and championing the combination of antiretroviral therapy and allowing the control of HIV replication in patients. Later, he shifted his work from treating AIDS late in the illness to finding ways to fight the disease in its early stages. Dr. Ho helped devise highly active antiretroviral therapy or (HAART), which prescribes a cocktail of drugs to treat AIDS, theorizing that a cocktail would effectively combine powerful protease inhibitors with other HIV medications. Dr. Ho and his research team are working on developing AIDS vaccines, and he heads a consortium of organizations in China and the United States to address the crisis of HIV/AIDS in China. He is member of the Committee of 100, a Chinese American leadership organization, and several scientific groups.

A Chinese-born Hong Kong American and British electrical engineer and physicist, the Honorable Sir Charles Kuen Kao pioneered in the development and use of fiber optics in telecommunications. Known by titles like “Godfather of Broadband and Father of Fiber Optics,” Kao shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication with Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith.

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